Advent Activities Calendar

This past year, we’ve been doing activity calendar countdowns to holidays…Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and, now, Christmas.  Although we have several traditional Advent calendars, with boxes or pockets for small toys or candy, we’re trying the activity one this year. Yes, I’ll probably have to do one of the others, as well, but this is a start!

To make it, I simply resized and printed out the Days of December page template from Stampin’ Up, then resized and printed Ali Edwards Advent Boxes from DesignerDigitals.com.  See, that’s why I wanted you to download that Days of December when it was free for Digital Scrapbooking Day!  If you did not, here’s a great alternative from Makoodle.

Anyhoo, I printed, cut, and then wrote out our list.  If you would rather, you can even type the list right on the cards before you print them.  I thought it was a nice touch to have my own handwriting on them, though.   After I wrote the activities, I figured out what would work on which day of the countdown and glued the backs together.  To make it a bit more finished, I rounded the corners of each card.

Then all that was left was to spice up the $4 frame I found at Walmart. This craft allowed me to use both a staple gun to attach the bakers’ twine and a hot glue gun for the burlap background.  All that was left to do then was hanging each card with cute little decorated clothespins. Oh, and I looped a wide striped ribbon around the frame to hand the whole shebang.

Voila! The hooligans will have such a great time with this!

Here’s our list, compiled from extensive research (I Googled “activity Advent calendars”):

1. Read the Elf on the Shelf book in preparation for his arrival

2. Clean out and organize toys and donate

3. Buy a toy and donate it to Toys for Tots

4. Make thumbprint tree ornaments from salt dough

5. Write letters to Santa

6.Celebrate St. Nicholas Day

7. Have a family game night

8. Make pinecone birdseed ornaments for outside tree

9. Make paper snowflakes and hang them EVERYWHERE!

10. Watch a Christmas movie

11. Do something kind and helpful for a family member

12. Focus on being kind and polite to everyone you meet

13. Read some Christmas books

14. Draw a Christmas picture

15. Make snow ice cream (hopefully!), or ice cream sundaes

16.Make cinnamon ornaments to tie on granola for neighbors

17. Decorate a gingerbread house

18. Bake and decorate cookies

19. Write Christmas notes to your teachers

20. Make ice candles

21. Drive around to look at lights and drink hot chocolate

22. Decorate birthday cupcakes for Jesus

23. Make a Christmas craft

24. Make popcorn and watch “The Polar Express” movie

Of course, your family’s list will be different…we’re certainly not the poster family for Advent activities!  We’re going to be travelling some days, so I had to figure out what activities would work in other places than our home.

Now I have to go hide this until December 1, or the hooligans will be begging to start!